Friday, July 11, 2014

Howard Update

Anne Blythe reports in the N&Othat Judge Hudson has said he wants to grant bail to Darryl Howard, whose prosecution, writes Blythe, the judge described “as one of the most 'horrendous' prosecutions he had seen in his 34 years on the bench.” The prosecutor in the case was, of course, disgraced ex-DA Mike Nifong.

As he has deemed Nifong as honorable and quite credible, author William D. Cohan has yet to comment once on the Howard case.

However, I believe the Morristown Book promoters may well have read "The Price of Silence". The problem is they almost surely have NOT read Johnson's/Taylor's "Until Proven Innocent". Furthermore, they probably wouldn't know the Durham-in-Wonderland blog if you hit them upside the head with it. I could go on.

I love the dream sequence in the last post. I would say "go all in" and hand out copies of the marvelous Wylie review, but it may cost a bit much for making copies. But, hey, it's a dream, make it a good one.

No insult intended toward Ms. Rabinowitz. I wish there were more like her.

The N&O's headline this morning (7/12/14) was:'Judge calls Nifong's conduct "horrendous"'The sub head was "Group Urges Audit Of Former Durham DA'S Cases" The group is the Innocence Project plus Darryl Howard, a man who was convicted and has spent 19 years in jail for a rape and two murders for which there was no physical evidence of his guilt and for which Nifong again hid exculpatory evidence. Nifong's friends in the DA's office have appealed to the NC Court of Appeals,which sadly has granted a stay.There seems to be no way to prosecute rogue prosecutors.

This is a bit off topic, but the subject of Peter Neufeld's statement supporting Nifong has come up several times. Jeffrey Toobin addressed his and Barry Scheck's role in O.J. Simpson's trial in Chapter 18 of his book "The Run Of His Life."

"There was a conflict in Scheck and Neufeld's two approaches to DNA; They trashed it when it implicated their clients and embraced it when it excluded them. The pair dealt with this state of affairs by resolutely refusing to acknowledge it, asserting instead that DNA 'matches' were simply less reliable than exclusions. But even Scheck's and Neufeld's admirers in the scientific community-and their were many of them-found this position difficult to swallow."

Neufeld was willing to see a totally innocent Reade Seligmann sent to prison for decades after doing everything he could to free a dead-bang guilty of a brutal double murder O.J. Simpson.

My own feeling is Scheck and Neufeld hoped to make it harder to obtain convictions from DNA in future trials, not just Simpson.

I'd be curious to know if Neufeld stuck by his statement to the NY Times or if he ever apologized to Reade Seligmann or any of the others for giving the NYT license to participate in a frameup.

Technically, Neufeld's comments were correct -- absence of DNA evidence in and of itself is not proof of innocence -- but absence of DNA evidence where there obviously WOULD be something IS evidence of innocence. That is where Reade and the others fit in, and Neufeld should have realized it as such.

So, does anyone know if Neufeld has tried to clarify or rectify his statement? At the time, it did horrendous damage to the falsely accused because it trashed the alibis of the three.

Anonymous 1:31 pm----Would the truth make any difference to some of those reviewers? If the truth mattered they would have altered their reviews as the facts were set forth in the negative reviews and comments posted to Amazon.

Many of those positive reviewers want the lacrosse players in the soup with the perpetrators. Then the actions of the Group of 88 professors and Duke administrators would not seem as bad as they really were/are. Some of us continue to fight this revisionism with the facts. Others still want 'dark side' ways to win, irrespective of the facts. They just don't want it to be THEIR reputations that are harmed.

Thanks for the link though! I'm thankful Good (truth and justice) seems to be winning at this point.

Mssrs. Neufield and Scheck behaved atrociously vis a vis the Duke LAX case in providing Mr. Nifong political and professional cover. Mr. Cohan behaved atrociously vis a vis the Duke LAX case in providing Mr. Brodhead, Duke, the Gang of 88, Mr. Nifong and his numerous assistants political and professional cover. And another OJ Simpson defender, Mr. Dershowitz, behaved atrociously vis a vis the Amanda Knox/ Raffaele Sollecito case by providing their prosecutor, Mr. Mignini, political and professional cover.

How can prosecutions that should outrage the dullest defense attorney elicit only public support from these supposed public intellectuals/superstars?

RALEIGH, N.C. — A North Carolina appeals court on Tuesday cleared the way to free a man who has spent nearly 20 years in prison for a double-murder conviction marked by misconduct from police and the prosecutor who was disbarred over the Duke lacrosse case.

The state Court of Appeals rejected a bid by prosecutors that would have blocked bail for Darryl Howard, 52. The move clears the way for a Durham judge to release Howard while he waits for prosecutors to decide whether to try him a second time.

Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson said last week he intends to free Howard on unsecured bond with electronic monitoring.

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review